State College police on Friday charged a Boalsburg man for injuring his 81-year-old neighbor in a hunting-related shooting in December.
According to a criminal complaint, 40-year-old Michael Lloyd and another man had returned home from hunting at 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 4 when Lloyd spotted a deer on a hill. Lloyd told investigators that he stopped at the bottom of his neighbor’s driveway and fired at least two shots at the deer, police wrote.
When Lloyd looked for the deer, he found his neighbor lying on the ground with blood on his face and head, according to the complaint.
Police arrived and found the neighbor with a gash on the top of his head and Lloyd rendering aid by keeping pressure on the wound with a towel.
EMS arrived and determined that the injury appeared to be a gunshot wound to the top of the neighbor’s head. The man was flown to UPMC Altoona, where a piece of his skull had to be removed because of a hole through the bone approximately 1 to 2 inches long and a half-inch wide, police wrote.
Lloyd told police he fired a .45mm semiautomatic pistol at the deer about 10 to 15 yards up the driveway, according to the complaint. Police observed that there was heavy brush behind the area where Lloyd said the deer was, making the rest of the driveway difficult to see.
Lloyd was charged by summons with misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person, shooting at and causing injury to a human being while hunting, and propulsion of missiles onto roadways, as well as five summary hunting violations.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 2.
